Dear Lauren:

Like you, I learned a great deal about my ancestry through, well, Ancestry.com. My mother and her favorite niece and I started tracing our family tree at the time the hit TV series, “Roots,” aired. Then, some 42 years ago, we had neither Ancestry.com nor 23andme.com. Genomics led me to find out that my father’s father was born in either Poland or Russia; his father was born in Germany, and his mother was born in Vienna.

Research led me to find out many other things about my family. I always knew, intellectually, that we were all the descendants of immigrants (including so-called Native Americans, who migrated from several areas in Siberia into Beringia and then into what is now North America). When I found out what my own family’s efforts involved, I realized viscerally what other families experienced.

And, yes, that gut-level empathy brought home the fundamental relatedness we all share through the various migratory paths that led us to where we are today. That sense of interconnection, regardless of ethnicity, religion, etc. makes us understand that we need to work and live together in harmony. Failing that, I suspect we’ll be joining the dinosaurs in our own self-inflicted Mass Extinction Event.